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Apollo 13

A near-disaster that became a Hollywood blockbuster

Launched on 11 April 1970, Apollo 13 was intended to be the third successful moon landing. But when one of its oxygen tanks exploded on its outward journey, the prospects looked grim for the three astronauts aboard: Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Frank Haise.

But in an astonishing turn of events, they and a huge team at NASA’s mission control, led by Gene Kranz, figured out a way to use the engine of the lunar landing module to power the command module onwards to the moon, orbit around it and return it to Earth on 17 April. In passing far over the far side of the moon, the Apollo 13 crew set a record for the furthest humans have travelled from Earth that stands to this day – 400,171 kilometres.

“Never have so few owed so much to so many” was how US President Richard Nixon described the mission, twisting the famous quote from Winston Churchill about the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain. It was a Hollywood-ready story of survival against the odds – and has indeed been dramatised many times, most notably in the 1995 Hollywood blockbuster Apollo 13 directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks.

But the near-disaster meant the end of the Apollo programme was near. The US had achieved the great cold-war propaganda victory of landing on the moon first in 1969, and a nation taxed by the Vietnam War saw little use for the continued drain on its finances. On 14 December 1972 astronaut Eugene Cernan was the last of the 12 people to have walked on the moon to leave its surface – and none have attempted to go back since. Mick O’Hare